Defendant-in-chief
The remarkable downfall of the most important Brazilian
“I DOUBT that anyone in this country is more law-abiding than me,” says Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. On July 29th a federal judge in the capital, Brasília, demurred in startling fashion. He accepted charges of obstruction of justice against Lula and six other people. Prosecutors say they tried to pay a former executive of Petrobras not to co-operate with the investigation into a vast bribery scandal centred on the state-controlled oil company. The judge thinks the evidence is strong enough to warrant a trial.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Defendant-in-chief”
The Americas August 6th 2016
From the August 6th 2016 edition
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